Update: I was unfortunately not aware of Shamus Young's severe criticism of Fallout 3 available here to link in the original piece and I regret that. It dovetails rather nicely with what I've written and it's much better executed than my piece. I strongly recommend anyone...

(PLEASE NOTE: THIS REVIEW IS BASED ON THE ORIGINAL SEGA GENESIS VERSION, NOT THE WII VIRTUAL CONSOLE VERSION!)

As the story of Altered Beast would have it, you were once a brave Roman Centurion. You are brought back from the dead by the god, Zeus with a specific mission: Defeat Neff, the god of the Underworld and free Athena so she may take her place among the gods. You are bestowed special powers which you must unleash by collecting spirit orbs. Once your Centurion is all buffed up, one final orb will transform you into a half beast - half man with amazing powers. Using these powers you must work your way through 5 stages in search for Neff. Each stage introduces a new beast form and a new end-level boss. In the final battle, Neff will unleash a transformation of his own upon you. The forms you will aquire along the way include: Werewolf, Were-dragon, Were-bear, Were-tiger and Gold Werewolf.

The controls are as follows: The direction pad will serve as your movement control for your character. Left and right will move your character in that specific direction, while Up will allow you to jump and Down will cause you to kneel down. The C button, in this particular game, also allows for Jumps. A and B will serves as your attack buttons. The A button will deliver kicks while B puches. Simply press Start to begin gameplay or to bring up the options screen, depending on the situation.

At the time this game was released, the Genesis had some of the better looking games, in comparison to Nintendo's 8-Bit titles. Altered Beast was a solid 16-Bit game with graphics that have stood the test of time (at least according to most people). For the most part, the beast forms look very well and the end-level bosses you encounter are also detailed very well.

While there's really no big difference in music from stage to stage, some of the most notable things about this game don't come from the music. Ask anyone if they've ever heard Zeus at the beginning of the game. Since the game's release, many people have joked that Elmer Fudd did voice-over work for the Greek god.

None of the game's 5 levels are very long, or challenging, for that matter. Each level can be completed in roughly 5 minutes or so. From start to finish, you will easily be able to complete this game in an hour, tops. But this quick playthrough will allow you to pick up the game pretty much any time you're bored without giving you something robust to play for hours on end.

In closing, I must admit that this would be a great game for anyone's classic collection.